Tuesday, February 02, 2010

The Right Gets Itself 'Wired'

By Robert ParryFebruary 3, 2010

In past years when I talked to American progressives about the growing media imbalance – as the Right gained dominance in books, magazines, newspapers, talk radio and cable TV – a typical response was, “well, the Left is stronger on the Internet.” But now even that advantage is disappearing, as should have been expected.

10 comments:

Lgillooly
said...

Bob, We ALL need to meet and expose the lies and hipcrycy/ During the Clinton YRS.tHE Govt was the enemy During the Bush yrs you were with the terrorists if you disgsreed with the Govt Now, again a Democrat is in and the Govt is the bad guy again. Is there any organization that can begin to consolidate ptogressives to expose this. Rush especially needs to be exposed to his own dittoheads. He would still deny climate change if the Polar ice cap was the size of an ice cube because big oil pays some of his salary, but what he has done to his own audience is despicable. They need know this somehow, someway..any ideas?

Robert,When the first tea party took place in my hometown of Des Moines, IA on the west lawn of the State House about 250 to 300 attented. All three of the local television news teams and a handful of radio news teams, especially the "50,000 Voice of the Midwest" and right wing echo-chamber WHO Radio, and reporters from The Des Moines Register were there.

About a month later at the same location Polk County Democrats and the AFL-CIO staged a pro-health care reform rally. Organizers said a thousand attended. However no TV, no radio and no reporters from the Des Moines Register.

Terrific piece. The point you make about funding is excellent. If left blogs get too critical of mainstream Democratic positions they can either be cut off or marginalized through poverty by having their foundation funding cut off. As you say, though, unfortunately too many on the left see this as a badge of honor, and tend to cover the right by chasing after headlines rather than digging deep as you do on their infrastructure. We need an independent funding model.

Progressives need to realize like the GOP that united we stand, divided we fall is true. If we do not organize and hit them where it hurts like exposing thet are all lobbyists for the big industries or that they actually vote against our troops, veterans and families when it comes to benefits for them or the GI BILL thant Bush vetoed and McCain felt was too generous. We need to take the convention wisdom that corporate talk radio, fox news and others have put in place and expose their reaal loyalties. They could give a hoot about people's rights, living standard and even the Christian right. They have used them for yrs. How do we get progressives all in one place to develop a strategy.?

Ray Kravis was primarily a tax accountant, and he had inventeda very special tax shelter which allowed oil properties to be "packaged" and sold in such a way as to reduce the tax on profits earned from the normal oil property rate of 81 percent to a mere 15 percent. This meant that the national tax base was eroded, and each individual taxpayer bilked, in order to subsidize the formation of immense private fortunes; this willbe found to be a constant theme among George Bush's business associates down to the present day....Such activity imparted the kind of primitive-accumulation mentality that was later seen to animate Ray Kravis's son Henry. During the 1980s, as we will see, Henry Kravis personally generated some $58 billion in debt for the purpose of acquiring 36 companies and assembling the largest corporateempire, in paper terms, of all time. Henry Kravis would be one of the leaders of the leveraged buyout gang which became a mainstay of the political machine of George Bush....

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until themid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficientmachine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organizationof advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtledthe richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not tosay the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents.(Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operationssuch as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) Butwhat we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were IrvingKristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F.Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIAbackgrounds.During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they hadlearned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that theAmerican version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versionsdesigned to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of thebusiness class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percentowned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent— the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionairebusinessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy Leaguescholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office ofStrategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from thenation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, sosocial!"

The forces behind Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glen Beck, Laura Ingraham, etc. are powerful, and exert a very unhealthy influence. They reinforce each other and are closely tied in with the Neocon cabal. They have built up a propaganda machine that steamrollers everything before it. Only Robert Parry dares expose them. Also was glad to see Mary Mapes defended and the truth about how they discredited her by the alleged phoney typewriter. Charron

If you were to summarize the claims in the comments to date and put them in the form of an outline, what ludicrous thesis you would have. You all sound schizophrenic. Please find somebody who you find to be reasonable, who does not share your views, and try out your thesis. If you’re honest with yourself you might get a hint why your ilk is fading from popularity.